While the last decade has witnessed some improvement in the educational attainment of multilingual pupils across Europe, educational inequality remains a reality in many education systems (OECD, 2019). Some empirical studies actually show that many pupils from an ethnic minority background significantly underperform in all skills measured (reading-comprehension, mathematics, science). In fact, disadvantages are sometimes already measurable before children enter primary school, when their additional language skills are found to be less well developed than that of their monolingual peers (Scheele, 2010). By contrast, research suggests that the conceptual knowledge base in the home languages facilitates additional language learning (Verhoeven, 2007) and can also be transferred across languages (Cummins, 2000).  However, in order to support young learners in benefiting from their home languages for learning, schools must have positive attitudes and pay explicit attention to pupils’ home languages (Cummins, 2008).

In order to address this challenge, interventions to promote multilingual education have recently been implemented in schools throughout Europe, with the aim of promoting language development and education attainment of multilingual pupils. Qualitative studies suggest that pupils who participate in programs promoting two languages acquire higher language skills in both languages when compared to children who attend mainstream education (Roth & Terhat, 2015; Duarte, 2011). Other studies involving multiple languages suggest that taking on a translanguaging (García, 2009) perspective or adopting a holistic approach in which all languages are included in instruction (Duarte & Günther-van der Meij, 2018; Cenoz & Gorter, 2011) enhance multilingual pupils’ participation in mainstream education and lead to fluid interaction practices in which existing language hierarchies are softened. For such interventions to be implemented, professionals must break with practices based on monolingual ideologies. Currently, however, the theoretical development of teaching approaches that use pupils’ multilingual competences is more advanced than empirical research on the implementation and effectiveness of such models (Herzog-Punzenberger, Le Pichon-Vorstman, & Siarova, 2017).

The main aim of this symposium is to explore the opportunities and challenges of interventions for multilingual education across European schools and analyse their influence on a number of aspects connected to language development, educational attainment, motivation, participation and well-being of pupils. The overarching research question for the current symposium is: what kind of multilingual approaches are currently developed and implemented across Europe and what is their effect on pupils as well as teachers and schools?

The symposium follows the path of education from early via primary to secondary education. First, Claudine Kirsch will present on multilingual practices in early education in Luxembourg and how professional development courses aim to provide educators with knowledge on multilingual practices. Second, Jasone Cenoz and Durk Gorter will present translanguaging approaches in primary education in the Basque Country. Third, Myrthe Coret-Bergstra, Mirjam Günther and Joana Duarte will focus on the effect of multilingual approaches in secondary education in the province of Fryslân (The Netherlands) on pupils’ and teachers’ attitudes and behavior towards multilingualism.

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